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Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise that plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) of the National Football League (NFL). They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The team plays its home games at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area, which finished construction in time for the 2009 season. The Cowboys joined the NFL as a 1960 expansion team. The team's national following might best be represented by its NFL record of consecutive home sell-outs. The Cowboys' streak of 160 sold-out regular and post-season games began in 1990, and included 79 straight sellouts at their former home, Texas Stadium, and 81 straight sell-outs on the road. The franchise shares the record for most Super Bowl appearances (8) with the Pittsburgh Steelers, corresponding to most NFC championships (8). The Cowboys are the only NFL team to record 20 straight winning seasons (1966–85), in which they only missed the playoffs twice (1974 and 1984), an NFL record that remains unchallenged.

Like many other Dallas Cowboys fans, I have been monitoring the developments in the Ezekiel Elliot case very closely. I have been a fan of the team since 1988, the last year of the Tom Landry era, so I have remained a fan of the team through many ups and downs. I am still a fan. I am also not much of a conspiracy theorist. I’m usually pretty sane but the theory I am going to expound upon seems outlandish. If it turns out that my theory is no more than speculation then you will be able to easily dismiss me as a harmless “crackpot”. I will have earned that dubious distinction. The problem for me right now is that regarding my current “conspiracy” theory is that everything I have predicted has turned out to be true. That certainly should raise a few eyebrows.

My conspiracy theory runs as follows. I believe that someone within the NFL (probably a very high ranking member of the organization) is actively pursuing an agenda of team bias and has acted improperly in implementing disciplinary decisions. I believe the four teams most directly involved are the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings, the Green Bay Packers, and the New York Giants. What I have noticed in the last few years is that the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants have received preferential treatment from the league on officiating and disciplinary matters while the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings have born the brunt of harsh punishments that are totally inconsistent when compared with the rest of the league. I think I have noticed it more because these are the four teams that I follow the most closely. Just to be clear, the Cowboys and the Vikings (in that order) are my two most favorite teams. The Packers and the Giants (in that order) are my two least favorite teams.

Quite frankly, I am sick and tired of the disproportionate punishments that have been meted out toward the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings by the NFL. These two teams have suffered immensely at the hands of prejudicial individual(s) whose treatment of these two teams has not been fair when compared with other league incidents both on and off the field. I am not going to say that the players involved in these incidents did not do anything wrong. Clearly, they did. However, the punishment should fit the crime. These two teams have been punished the most severely by the league for such incidents as when compared with other teams. The slightest of infractions earn these teams the maximum penalty while other teams get a slap on the wrist. By examining each of these incidents (briefly), it will become clear that this accusation is true.

I am going to start with the case of Adrian Peterson. In an article dated September 12, 2014, Peterson admitted to “whooping” his then 4-year old son with a “switch” (tree branch) for what he describes as “not acting right”. I certainly do not condone Peterson’s actions and I believe he DID go overboard in disciplining his child. For this incident, I believe a suspension was warranted. In my opinion, I think a four game suspension would have been appropriate given that the child did misbehave and Peterson acted appropriately in the role of a parent in disciplining his child, even if he did so excessively. As you will remember, Peterson was suspended a year, WITHOUT PAY, in the prime of his possibly HALL OF FAME career. This would be a harsh punishment for ANY player to endure. I believe that if he had been with another team, then his punishment would not have been as severe.

Ray Rice, a WR for the Baltimore Ravens who was videotaped beating his then girlfriend and now wife and mother of his children received no suspension at all. I mention this incident because it happened in the same time frame as the Peterson incident. Yeah, many of are still scratching our heads about that one. I wanted to include these incidents as proof that the NFL did indeed discriminate against the Vikings on this occasion but I want to get to the Cowboys situations.

Also, it seems interesting to me that the Vikings started the 2016 campaign 5-0 but went on to miss the playoffs while in 10 weeks of the 2016 campaign, the Green Bay Packers had posted a 4-6 record but went on to win the division, an extraordinarily strange turn of events. (Hmm, interesting.)

I will get to Ezekiel Elliot in due course but first I want to discuss Randy Gregory’s suspension which I believe has merit in this discussion. On February 19, 2016, Randy Gregory was, APPROPRIATELY, suspended for violating the league’s substance abuse policy. I believe this was fair. Subsequently, a few months later, he failed another drug test and was suspended for another 10 games. Once again, I believe this was another fair suspension. On November 11, it was announced that he had failed yet another drug test prompting a year-long suspension on top of the other 14 games he had already missed. Once again, I believe the year-long suspension was warranted due to his infractions. What I don’t think was fair was the timing of the decision. Gregory played, successfully in my opinion, against Detroit and Philadelphia. It was speculated that the league might postpone his suspension and allow him to play in the playoffs. Instead, they suspended him very quickly after the Philadelphia game meaning that he would not take part in even one playoff game. He was a defensive player who certainly would have been useful against GREEN BAY (Hmm, interesting). His presence could possibly have changed the outcome of the game. The NFL certainly could not take that kind of chance. They suspended him as soon as possible to see to it that the Cowboys did not win any more games that year.

Now, I want to discuss Ezekiel Elliot’s case. Elliot was accused by his then girlfriend, Tiffany Thompson, of domestic violence. Very few facts have been released about this case making it difficult to determine what actually happened. However, the fact that Elliot was never arrested or charged with any criminal wrongdoing leads me to believe that this was a minor incident. The NFL investigated for over a year and all the records say is that he is guilty of violence against the accuser. That I do believe. However, I also believe that this incident was not enough to warrant a 6-game suspension although I do think that a shorter suspension was probably in order. It’s hard to determine what would be appropriate without the relevant facts. I will say though that every single one of my predictions regarding Elliot has proved true. I correctly predicted that Ezekiel Elliot would receive the maximum suspension allowed for this infraction. He did. I also correctly predicted that the league would not even consider overturning his suspension. They didn’t. The only surprise to me in this whole affair is that they are allowing Elliot to play against the Giants. I had to think a little harder about this one to come up with an answer.

Many NFL analysts seem to think that the Giants are one of the best teams in the league this season. I don’t. However, the Giants did beat the Cowboys twice last season in two very close games. I think it is the conspirator’s intention (once again I do not know who but I have my suspicions) to humiliate the Cowboys on national television this Sunday night attempting to prove that Dallas’ 13-3 record last season was a fluke, that they really are not a very good team, and that Dak Prescott’s rookie season was also a fluke. They also want to show that even with Elliot in the game, so in essence with the Dallas offense at full strength, that the Giants will be able to win proving that they are better and destroying the Cowboys’ confidence in the process. My prediction is that the Giants will come out of the blocks like gangbusters and attempt to flatten the Cowboys. I mean they will anyway but I think the Giants will play with a particularly violent intensity that it will be difficult for an unprepared team to match. Please do everything in your power to prevent this. I believe the league wants you to lose and lose badly.

As a final note, I would like to say that I am not a fan of Roger Goodell. I think he is a lousy commissioner and that his disciplinary schemes have been terribly inconsistent. I truly think that he is biased concerning certain teams while favoring others. I think it is possible that he may be the orchestrating these shenanigans from the league office. Again, I have no proof, just a theory. This kind of bias should not be tolerated from the commissioner of the NFL.

THANK YOU Jerry Jones for leading the charge against the current commissioner!! The article I read says you had a conference call with 17 of the league's current owners. All you need is seven more votes. I hope you find them.

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